


rag-doll, cloth people

by lordbirthdayxv



Series: All Flowers in Time [1]
Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Character Study, Heavy Angst, M/M, Smut, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, there is love here but it has to be dug out of the debris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:08:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26884174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordbirthdayxv/pseuds/lordbirthdayxv
Summary: “How do you usually solve problems?”We don’t. “We talk to each other.”“And? Is the communication easy?”We haven’t spoken since he fucked me in the kitchen last night. “Yes. We know each other’s limits and we’re usually on the same wavelength.”Changkyun’s hand tightens painfully around his and he fights to keep the polite smile on his face. The therapist looks between them and smiles thin.“Alright then. I’ll assign you two an activity for the next two weeks.”They read a book together and pick up the pieces of what once was and what may have a chance to be again if they want it to be.
Relationships: Im Changkyun | I.M/Yoo Kihyun
Series: All Flowers in Time [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968214
Comments: 14
Kudos: 56





	rag-doll, cloth people

**Author's Note:**

> The italicized parts are both of them reading
> 
> tw for instances of domestic abuse

Kihyun likes to think it all went wrong when they moved into the new place. It’s easy to blame walls for echoing resounding slaps. The doors for slamming shut behind angry steps. Away, away from each other. Far enough to not see anything even if they turn back to look. He doesn’t want to call it hell because it wasn’t, not really. One doesn’t love as hard as they did in hell. Screaming into each other’s faces until a much more primal need took over, the need to utterly destroy one another. To rip into each other’s throats and drink each other’s blood. Burn their bones to ashes.

“We’re very passionate about each other,” he says to the man behind the desk. They are in couples therapy and he can sense Changkyun biting back a retort to his claim. The therapist looks less than convinced. 

“How do you usually solve problems?”

We don’t. “We talk to each other.”

“And? Is the communication easy?”

We haven’t spoken since he fucked me in the kitchen last night. “Yes. We know each other’s limits and we’re usually on the same wavelength.”

Changkyun’s hand tightens painfully around his and he fights to keep the polite smile on his face. The therapist looks between them and smiles thin.

“Alright then. I’ll assign you two an activity for the next two weeks.”

Read a favorite book together. Record your thoughts. Kihyun wants to roll his eyes but resists the urge. He hates Changkyun’s choice in literature. Naturally, Changkyun hates his. Was it always like this? He doesn’t remember.

“ _Sarrasine_?” Kihyun blinks at the worn cover. Frowns. Changkyun is already moving away to the kitchen. “We’re supposed to read a favorite book. Not one we hated so much we refused to turn in our book report and got an F on our Classic Lit final.”

Changkyun scoffs as he pops open a can of beer. “Since when did you know what I like or don’t like?”

Kihyun scowls. He is not in the mood. He walks over to the shelf and puts Balzac back. Gets another book. Deposits it on the kitchen counter.

“I have a rolodex of all your humiliating moments in life. I made it a point to memorize them.”

“Of course you did. Who would you be if not petty and hurtful?”

Kihyun slams the door to his study, not dignifying Changkyun with a response. 

Changkyun doesn’t touch the book for another two days. It watches him from the corner of his desk as he struggles to write a scathing piece on the mediocrity of _Midsommar_ and resists the urge to call the movie “gratuitous cult garbage” and be done with it. The thin book sits there, frowning Kihyun’s frown at him. Judging his inability to produce something worthwhile.

_If you’d only get your head out of your ass and give others’ opinions a chance._

Changkyun scoffs. Writes another biting sentence. Backspace. More words. A few sentences. Backspace. 

“Fine,” he snaps at thin air and pushes away from his desk. Shuts his laptop and grabs the book. Of course he’s read it once. Many years ago when they were dead-eyed caffeine junkies in university. When the steam that fogged up Kihyun’s hopelessly outdated glasses was endearing in the dim library light. When Kihyun would lace his fingers with Changkyun’s as they shopped for Christmas presents. When Kihyun used to be able to say “I love you” because he meant it, not because he wanted Changkyun as a sexual buffer for his issues. 

_Fair reader I offer a mere analogy_. It even sounds like something he would say in that condescending tone he kept reserved for Changkyun. He idly wonders why Kihyun hadn’t chosen Nabokov. Thinks of autumn leaves and whispered poems and decides it was better this way after all. _A delay. What is being delayed?_

“Marriage, I guess.” He says out loud. Scoffs and looks out the window. It has been raining since morning and a small voice in his head whispers that Kihyun would want to cuddle when he gets home. Rainy days brought out the neediness in him. Made him defenseless and plaint and once upon a time, it made Changkyun want to carry him away in his arms. Someplace safe, where it was warm and Kihyun’s soft, floral scent peppered the air. Hold him close to his chest and pour all his love into Kihyun’s mouth, head tipped backwards and eyes half-mast. 

Now, it makes Changkyun want to hit him where it hurts the most. _You and I_. Take advantage of his soft vulnerability and injure him bad enough to draw blood. Make him scream in agony and beg Changkyun to make it stop. _We have this deep sadness between us and it spells so habitual, I can’t tell it from love_. In his mind, he has killed Kihyun several times. Gouged out his eyes and torn into his beautiful skin. Bruised the tender flesh of his stomach and crushed his windpipe. The images come easily to him, like second nature. 

_I still love you. You make me cry._

When Kihyun comes home that evening he looks drained and Changkyun does what he always does. Ignores him and continues to read. He hears the tell-tale sound of a bottle opening. A ragged breath and a choked sob. _Purple slaughter-house where Bacchus’ self pricked his own swollen veins._

Changkyun hates it. Hates how the low, muffled sobbing trickles into his ears and interrupts the words. _Hard bulbs of wet red_ sobbing _satin exploding under your feet_ cluttering as something breaks _you’ll have juice all over_ a wail, long and loud as a body hits the ground and Changkyun has had enough.

“Can you shut the _fuck_ up back there?”

More wails. Lower this time. Kihyun, crawling on his hands and knees, face a mess of tears and snot. Crawling over to where he sits on the arm-chair. Ragged breathing as he paws at Changkyun’s pant leg.

“I need- I need-” wheezing. Clumsy hands climbing up his chest. “Give me please, something, anything- give me-”

Lips on Changkyun’s lips. Breath that smells like beer but a mouth that tastes like velveteen grapes. _Tongue is the smell of October to me._

He pushes him away and walks to his room. Kihyun’s pathetic wails follow him until he shuts the bedroom door.

It is his mother. Changkyun watches as Kihyun hugs a relative, whispers something in her ear. Smiles a watery smile. His cheeks are gaunt and his eyes are lightless. Changkyun looks toward the framed picture of the woman he is supposed to be mourning and feels supremely bored. The burial is a short affair. Kihyun has mercifully stopped crying by the time his mother is in the ground and Changkyun feels himself getting increasingly hot under the blazing sun. Looks to Kihyun again and feels a mix of irritation and disdain. How like him to try and use sex to tide over his grief. 

_Desire doubled is love and love doubled is madness_. He leans close to Kihyun’s ear and whispers: “madness doubled is marriage.” Kihyun’s lip quivers and he looks away.

He has his hands in Changkyun’s hair when they return home. Back pressed against the door and Changkyun snarls and goes for his jugular. Bites him hard enough to break the skin and Kihyun keens. Shoves a knee between Changkyun’s legs and weeps as Changkyun sucks on the blooming bruise. I never wanted to harm you. He pushes Kihyun to the floor and takes him there as Kihyun cries, sobs and whimpers and calls his name like it’s the only word he has ever learned. He babbles nonsensically as Changkyun pushes in, wanting it to hurt, to cleave him in half. 

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

Afterwards he lets his fingers slide into Kihyun’s hair and pulls hard. Pushes his face onto his cock. Watches as Kihyun chokes. Later he stares up at Changkyun from the floor, a mess of ripped clothes, of bruises, of cum drying in his hair. And Changkyun feels the overwhelming need to cry and beg for forgiveness. To kiss him as he once used to and take him in his arms again. Dangerous. He decides to hide behind someone else’s words.

“If I could kill you I would then have to make another exactly like you.” 

“Why?”

“To tell it to.”

The woman has her breasts flush against him and all Changkyun feels is revulsion. She smells sweet. Floral. Like Kihyun. And Changkyun hates her for that. There is color high in her cheeks and she is pushing him down on her bed. He doesn’t remember how he got here. His brain refuses to work as the woman’s perfume assails his nostrils and clogs his senses. 

He has to make a conscious effort not to throw up on her. 

She is kneeling between his legs and she smells like his husband and all he wants is to fall asleep and never wake up. He doesn’t want to think of Kihyun. Kihyun, who had pushed him onto the coffee table so hard that it had immediately bruised. Kihyun, who had held him like a baby as he cried like one. Kihyun, whose shirt he had clung to until he had been shoved away. Kihyun, who had locked himself in the bathroom and refused to come out.

Kihyun who could be dead right now and Changkyun realizes he doesn’t care in the slightest.

“Will I see you again?”

It is morning and he is at her door and his head is throbbing. He wants to scoff in her face but makes a promise for next week instead. 

The house is silent when he steps in and suddenly all he wants to do is find Kihyun and make sure he is okay. The bathroom door gives under his repeated kicks and there he is, water up to his neck in the tub. 

He looks so pale it is almost blue. Changkyun can feel hot tears streaming down his face as he holds him close and he is so so cold but he is breathing and beneath Changkyun’s palm his heart feels as weak as a dying bird’s. Changkyun gathers him to his chest and holds him, swaddled in all the blankets he can find. Rocks desperately back and forth and feels sobs claw their way painfully out of his throat. _Today I have not won._

Kihyun's eyes flutter open and Changkyun presses his cold fingers to his lips and kisses him feverishly. _I only feel clean when I wake up next to you._

Kihyun holds on to him and doesn’t smell the perfume on him because it smells just like himself. 

“Do you want strawberry or chocolate?” Jooheon is narrowing his eyes at the colorful display of cakes. They are at his favorite café and he hasn’t seen Jooheon in weeks. 

“Mint chocolate.” Jooheon pauses. Snorts a laugh.

“God you two are practically one person, I swear.”

Changkyun looks at the green and brown layer cake and wills himself to feel nauseous as he once did. To make the face he did when Kihyun would hold the fork up to his mouth and insist that he at least try once I swear you’ll change your mind, baby. He remembers the taste of the horrible pastry cream when he licked into Kihyun’s mouth on their couch, holding court in his lap. Remembers the noise of the TV fading into the background as the world became flowers and mint chocolate and blunt fingernails digging into his thighs.

In the café he shrugs and smiles at his friend. Listens to him talk about his trip to some foreign country and the food he had eaten there. He is glad to have the company even as his words flow like water in and out of his ears.

“What the fuck is _that_?” Changkyun blinks. Follows Jooheon’s line of sight. Covers up his shoulder with the sweater that is too loose on his neck. Jooheon is still looking shocked.

“You know how it gets in the bedroom.” _Fiction forms what streams in us_. “We’ve been experimenting.”

Jooheon sputters and blushes. _Naturally, it is suspect_. “What the fuck did you guys do, my dude? It looks like you had a fucking wardrobe fall on top of you.”

A candle stand. Baroque. It had been Kihyun’s mother’s. “Shit got a bit out of hand is all.”

“How out of hand?!”

Enough to have Kihyun use makeup to cover up his black eye every day. _Blame and shame are the name of the game._

That night he dreams of Kihyun cutting down trees but they had already been dead a long time. There are wood shavings in his hair and splinters in his palms. 

_These are my trophies my campaigns my honors I lay them before you._ He looks so sad, a wooden man with wood shavings in his hair.

He wakes up to Kihyun sitting on the kitchen floor at 4am, boxes of leftovers around him and chunks of food around his mouth. In the wan light of the open refrigerator, he looks like he is already dead.

Changkyun cleans his face, picks him up and takes him back to bed.

“I want a divorce.”

 _They watch stray drops of this fact condense on the air between them_. Kihyun has to leave for work in ten minutes and Changkyun finds it difficult to comprehend what exactly he is feeling. _Some call it love but those two whose souls knit at that moment-_

“Okay.” 

_-did not love one another._

Kihyun looks at him like a destitute child looks at glittering pearls in a display window and Changkyun feels his heart pump something poisonous into his veins. He walks up to Kihyun and cups his face and sees that he is crying. Big, fat tears that roll down his lovely face with reckless abandon. Changkyun kisses him one. Twice. Kisses him like he means it. _How much simpler that would have been._

“A week,” he chokes out as their kisses turn to weak attempts at trying to fit their mouths together. It used to be so easy to slip into each other’s orbit. Now it feels like trying to fit into clothes three sizes too small.

“A week. Till our next session. We can go to the lawyer after that. I just need to- to-”

He doesn’t want to tell him about the book but he needs to finish it. He needs to finish it while they’re still bound. He has an irrational fear that the book and all its copies will disappear from the world when Kihyun disappears from his. 

Kihyun nods and steps out of his embrace. Doesn’t look back on his way out.

_God help us then. Our so-called love_. Kihyun sits in the comfortable chair and sees everything as if through fine mesh. 

One week and the thought makes his palms itch with the sudden need to hold on to something. Something intangible, which was absurd and yet not absurd at all because Kihyun knew what he wanted to hold on to and it was absurd because he had never held it in the first place and it was already time to let it go. Handrails for two unwilling passengers in a limping car, on their way to their doom. 

There are people speaking all around him but all he hears is words from a book in his own voice. Words mocking him saying things like _you are trying to collect not autumn but freedom_ and all he can think of is how Changkyun tasted between his legs. He makes his way through the meeting, undetected in his reverie. He doesn’t want them to see him like this. Vulnerable. On the cusp of separation. Of being split into two.

He walks to his office with a head as heavy as water, pressing bedrock against the backs of his eyes and his eardrums threating to burst. He has an e-mail and when he opens it it’s from the man he used to call husband once. _I go through motions already made in another life_ , it says and Kihyun wants to drop forward upon his desk and fall deeply asleep. It is dark when he opens his eyes and the floor lamp in his office is on. He feels the water in his head drain as he slowly walks through the empty floor, humming quietly to himself. 

Changkyun sits at the kitchen table when he comes home and Kihyun sits at his feet. Changkyun doesn’t look at him. 

“Can I touch you?”

“No.”

“Can you hold me?

“No.”

“Give me something.”

“All I’ve done is give.”

“I just want you-”

“I don’t care.”

_I stand firmly on the foundation of the love I fashioned, yes our love._

“Look inside yourself. There you see a world travelling silently through space.” He has taken Changkyun’s hands and holds them in a parody of a prayer. He looks into his impassive face and tells himself he sees it. Something left over from years of loving each other too hard and then not at all. Exhausted. _We are indissoluble._

Changkyun backhands him across the face and leaves the kitchen. His coffee sits there on the table, forgotten like the man on the floor. 

Kihyun remembers reading together underneath a large tree on campus, bent over books and laptops and desperately trying to keep a passing grade. Remembers laughing and retching over Nabokov and reading passages out loud to disgust each other. Changkyun saying something about isolating and re-contextualizing and whispering words into his skin that ceased to mean the same thing afterward. 

_My car is limping, Changkyun Im_ and Changkyun would laugh and swat at him, call him disgusting. Then finish the verse. _And the last long lap is the hardest._

 _I don’t want to dump you, though_. Laughter. __

__

_I want you to stay_. A kiss. Another. _Don’t care about the rest._

_Because the rest is rust and stardust?_

_Exactly. And the stars we see died centuries ago. But here you are._

_Here I am._

_Détente and reconciliation. Let’s start again_. But it settles like breezeblocks in his throat when he finds a plain gold band by the sink in the morning. He blinks at it for a very long time. The water flows steadily from the tap into his hands. He doesn’t notice his fingers prune in its warmth. _Flow. This flowing._

Centuries later he tears his eyes away from the ring and walks back into their bedroom. Kneels by Changkyun’s sleeping form. Takes his hand and stares at the tender sliver of lighter skin on his fourth finger. _Why sadness? This flowing the world to its end._

Behind him, the bathroom tap gushes water relentlessly and it sounds like the blood throbbing in his ears. But now the blood seems to be the only thing in the room. Changkyun opens his eyes and regards him with a terrifying blankness before pulling him into bed and pushing a hand down his boxers. His teeth nip at Kihyun’s neck and Kihyun wants to sob like a child.

_If a husband throws the dice of his beauty one last time, who is to blame?_

Here he is again, looking at a man in his bathroom mirror. He has rug burns on his elbows and knees and there is cum on his face. When he darts out a tongue he can taste its bitterness like Changkyun’s anger on his skin. He raises his hands to his face and watches water slip through his fingers. He needs to wash it off. Little ticks of resentment and rage climbing up his skin and into his eyes. He feels them burrowing into his skin and making nests, hundreds and hundreds of them. _Mark me_ he used to say once and Changkyun obliged. Now he doesn’t need to ask.

_What can save these marks from themselves? What if we drop a little more solvent on the seam-_

There are bruises blooming like roses on his thighs and he thinks they look beautiful. In his comfortable chair safely behind his desk, he reads slowly, letting the words wash over him. _And kneeling at the edge of the transparent sea I shall shape for myself a new heart from salt and mud-_

“Ki, you want something to eat?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Come on. We’re going to that new place around the corner.”

I said I’m not hungry.”

Minhyuk is sitting at the edge of his desk and staring down at him. “You look like a drowned weasel. Does that husband of yours not feed you?” _Sad severe tango dance of love and death._

The sandwiches look nice but his mouth feels like it’s made of silt. His stomach twists painfully but he refuses to give his body what it needs if his heart can’t have what it wants.  
_You used to say the body is the beginning of everything_. Kihyun turns away and looks resolutely out the window. 

Sitting on opposite ends of the couch as they read the same book, one paper and one screen, Kihyun wants to hurt Changkyun. 

“I kissed Minhyuk today.” He hadn’t. Kihyun had touched himself. Changkyun doesn’t answer.

“He touched my neck and kissed it like he meant it.” Pages ruffling. And then silence.

“I sucked him off in his chair and swallowed it all. I took what he gave me. I took it all.” Silence lies heavy around them now, clinging to Kihyun’s hair like cobwebs and blocking all sound from his ears. _Everything else in the world is still, talk is not._

Kihyun shifts closer and cups Changkyun’s cock over his sweatpants. “He bent me over my desk and fucked me until I begged for release and then he filled me up so good. I still have his cum in my ass because I’m a dirty dirty slut and I loved being stuffed with his cock-”

Changkyun makes a derisive sound and suddenly Kihyun is splayed across his lap, his sweatpants bunched around his ankles and Changkyun’s fingers deep inside him. A stinging slap makes him jerk violently in his grip. 

“How fucking dare you show up in our home with your ass dripping some other man’s cum?”

Kihyun shivers in perverse delight. _Our home._

Changkyun is removing his fingers and growling low in his throat. “What the fuck is this? Did you do this?” He manhandles Kihyun between his legs and holds him by the hair at the back of his head. Pulls and Kihyun mewls. Changkyun laughs bitterly.

“Is that how badly you wanted my fingers in your ass? Is that all you want?”

I love you I need you help me I love you so much. “Do you have anything else to give?”

Changkyun runs his thumb across Kihyun’s lower lip and Kihyun opens obediently, tongue flicking out to lick at it. Changkyun opens his mouth wider and spits into it. 

“Fuck you” are his last words to Kihyun that night but it’s okay. They have had worse nights. 

_If you were on a whim to come and soothe me now, I would be happy. And at the heart of it all, the lure that makes war an addiction for some people-_

Kihyun knows their time has come and in this dusky blue in-betweenness he wants as much of Changkyun as he can put away in the folds of his memory. In the kitchen, he falls to his knees and prays for forgiveness to a god instead of the man who sits in the room down the hall. He has no strength in his bones but knows that he needs to do this. 

Changkyun is at his desk when Kihyun loops his arms around his neck and kisses his jaw. 

“I don’t want you right now.”

“I want you.”

“It’s always about you, isn’t it?”

“Let me love you.”

“Don’t call what you do love.”

“Then let me do what I do best. Let me have you one last time.” _I hand you my fate. But don’t take pity._

Changkyun turns around in his chair and his eyes shine with unshed tears. Kihyun reaches forward and takes him in his arms. Wraps his legs around his waist and picks him up. Changkyun is sobbing on his neck now and Kihyun carries him to bed. Puts him gently on top of the sheets. 

“This is our one chance to amaze each other.”

He kisses Changkyun like he remembers kissing him the first time. Undresses him with tender hands and brushes his hair away from his forehead. Sweet boy. _His_ sweet boy but not for long. He knows he is buying time, stretching scant moments between them and elongating them to infinity that is two bodies on a warm bed. He is limping to the finish line on perfectly healthy feet, wishing the end to stray farther and farther away from him. 

“Changkyunnie?”

“Mm?”

“I have always loved you.”

A beat. A sniffle.

“I know.”

Kihyun’s lips skip over Changkyun’s neck and his hands pour honey into Changkyun’s mouth. Warm and amber and thick, it dribbles out of the corners of his lips and Kihyun laps it up like it was Changkyun’s very breath. There is a mess of honey and tears on Changkyun’s face and Kihyun realizes with all the terrifying certainty of a revelation that _this_ is them. Love, thick like honey that they spill into each other’s mouths, always close to choking on it but knowing for certain that they won’t, that they have each other. And Kihyun is done fighting a feeling that he knows in his very bones. 

“You are already me,” he whispers as he slips fingers thick with honey into Changkyun’s mouth. Watches his eyes fill with tears and watches him choke on them. “Condition of me. How fucking tragic, Changkyunnie. How fucking tragic.”

Changkyun spreads his thighs and looks up at him with something he recognizes like an ancient artifact in a museum. Old, so old. But it is _them_. And it has always been them, hard and soft edges looking for purchase within each other, settling uncomfortably on top of each other long enough that it began to feel comfortable. _And life has risks, terrible risks. Love is one. Terrible risks._

“Fate’s my bait,” Changkyun digs his heels into Kihyun’s lower back as Kihyun buries himself deep inside of him. It feels like home. With all its tattered comfort in water stained ceilings and rickety doors and stale muggy air where sunlight shines like a million floating balls of dust. It suffocates but it is them. And for once, Kihyun doesn’t want it to suffocate them anymore. He wants to live and he wants the beautiful boy moaning debauched music beneath him to live. _Hold. Hold beauty._

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers into Changkyun’s honey sweet mouth. “Baby. My baby. Mine. I love you. I don’t want to hurt you, I never wanted to hurt you.”

Changkyun takes the lobe of his ear between his teeth. Kisses down his jaw and stops at his lips. “I know, honey. I know. I love you too, I love you so much. I’m so tired.”

And so Kihyun holds. Holds beauty until it falls asleep. 

“How are we today, gentlemen?” 

Changkyun smiles. “We’re good.” Looks at Kihyun and smiles again, a little hesitant. 

The therapist nods. “Well then. If I remember correctly, I assigned some homework.” He folds his hands in front of him and smiles expectantly. “What book did you decide on?”

“We didn’t.”

The man blinks in confusion. “Pardon?”

Kihyun smiles and leans forward. “There’s something you need to know before we continue our sessions, Dr. Song.”

A beat. Then. “I’m listening.”

Kihyun takes a deep breath. Feels Changkyun take his hand. This time he holds it like a flower susceptible to bruising at the slightest pressure. Kihyun smiles.

“There have been… aspects of our relationship that we have not shared with you.” He looks at Changkyun and then back at the man.

“Like what?”

“We-,” a pause. “We suffocate each other, to put it mildly.” He looks at Changkyun. “And we would like not to, anymore.” He looks back at the therapist who looks mildly surprised, as if he saw this coming. 

“We want to live,” Changkyun says softly, carefully. Measuring his words. “And we want to live together.”

Later that night, as they lie in bed facing each other, Changkyun breathes softly and places a hand on Kihyun’s cheek. “Do you think we can make it?” He is afraid. Afraid of more hurt and more pain. Of bruises on his skin and Kihyun’s skin and the fear of coming home one day and finding the other’s body cold and pulse frozen. They are capable of that. They’ve come frighteningly close. 

Kihyun leans into the touch and kisses his palm. Feels the cold metal of Changkyun’s wedding band against his lips and feels a knot loosen somewhere in his chest. He kisses the ring and then the finger and then leans forward to kiss soft lips that part like a blooming flower beneath his. This is his. This has always been his and somewhere along the way both of them forgot this feeling so thoroughly that it now comes back in a deluge that threatens to drown them. Pain from a suppressed ache blooms between them and flows like air into their lungs. Like their bodies have hungered for numberless years. Kihyun knows that it's time to stop denying themselves what they need. Have needed since their eyes found each other and hands followed, seeking familiar warmth and comfort. For years they have been passengers in a limping car, feeling trapped beside each other, each having forgotten that they _chose_ to get in the car together.

“My car is limping, Changkyun Im,” Kihyun starts slowly and Changkyun giggles softly against the pillow.

“Oh my god, Kihyun.”

“And the last, long lap is the hardest,” Kihyun hopes he looks as earnest as he feels. Changkyun’s laughter bubbles into soft chuckles before finally settling into a warm smile. He curls a hand around Kihyun’s neck.

“And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,” he whispers. Pulls Kihyun closer. “and the rest is-”

“-rust and stardust.”

And as they kiss again and again and then again, re-acquainting themselves with their bodies and their voices, Kihyun feels that they might indeed make it, limping cars be damned.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem Kihyun improvises is from Lolita. The book they're reading is Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson.
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ajghar1)


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